red paper boat

My aunt sent me a link to a maritime history site that had searchable newspaper extracts. I was able to track down another website with archived images from one of the newspapers, where I found this ad in the Daily British Whig (17 June 1871, page 2, column 6).

There’s no way to know which Captain Couvrette was piloting the Union.  It could have been Louis Charles or his (I am presuming) brother, George, who was also a boat captain.

I have spent weeks concentrating on Louis Charles and Philomene’s family group.  I haven’t even begun to investigate laterally, so Captain George Couvrette will have to wait until I get the time to untangle Louis Charles’ siblings and figure out who was who.

My aunt also uncovered evidence of some Couvrettes settling in the Red Lake area of Minnesota (Joseph Couvrette appears to have married a native woman named Mari).  That wouldn’t be far, geographically, from the Crookston area, where Louis Charles finally settled.  I have no idea where the relation between Louis Charles and Joseph is, but there is sure to be one.  That’s another puzzle to add to the To Research list.

Yes, this AGAIN.

I am convinced, though I have only negative proof, that Marie Catherine and Alma are the same person.

1. I have a baptismal register entry for Marie Catherine in 1862 but none for Alma.

Both the younger and older siblings Marie Catherine and Alma are sandwiched between were baptized at St-Joachim in Châteauguay, so it makes sense (though is no guarantee) that any children born in between would have been baptized there, as well. I have manually searched every page of the St-Joachim register for those years, to no avail. If there was another child born to Louis Charles and Philomene, between their youngest and Louis, she wasn’t baptized at St-Joachim.

2. I have found no trace of Marie Catherine after her baptism.

She does not appear in any census, and as far as I can tell, there is no record of her marriage or burial. She disappeared into thin air. Granted, she was born in 1862 and the next census was in 1871, and a lot can happen in nine years.

3. The 1901 Census of Canada recorded exact birth dates, and Alma’s is given as 25 November 1863. Now, that’s a year off, but the month is correct. It’s absolutely possible that two children could be born nearly exactly a year apart, especially in a large Catholic family at that place and time. However, I think it’s also possible that adult Alma was wrong about her birth year. That seems like a believable mistake.

4. What was Alma’s baptismal name? Surely it would have been prepended with Marie and another name, as was the norm in this family. Nor does the baptismal register give any indication of what Marie Catherine’s third name would have been. That’s the name she would have gone by in regular life. Was there one child, named Marie Catherine Alma?

I’m not ready to merge the two individuals, but I may eventually do so, after a bit more searching. By 1868, the family had changed churches, and the next batch of children were baptized and buried at Sts.-Anges-Gardiens, in Québec. That register is a little more difficult to search (it’s much larger than St-Joachim’s register and is not indexed), so I haven’t searched it thoroughly yet. It may be that Marie Catherine’s burial is recorded there.

Y’all, this is the stuff that keeps me up at night.

Quebec Official Gazette volume XII number 44 page 55

When all else fails, use Teh Googles. Which I did this morning, during my work break. And look what I found! I’m not completely sure what it means, but it’s kind of interesting nonetheless. Philomene is, for some reason, suing Louis Charles for separation of property. This was often done at or right after marriage, to ensure the wife had property of her own (though that could work against her, too, in the event of a divorce). In this case, they’d been married for 19 years and had 16 (SIXTEEN!) children. The marriage was no spring chicken. Separation of property could also occur at the time of divorce. But that doesn’t seem to have been the case, either, as the couple–together and with their minor children–upped stakes and headed to Minnesota just a few years after this notice was published.

Did Philomene intend to file for divorce, but then changed her mind? Was she trying to protect the couple’s assets (or at least, her share of them)? Was she trying to put the fear of God into Louis Charles? Was the move to Minnesota somehow tied up with all of this?

Interestingly, the couple were living together at the time of the 1885 Minnesota census, but Philomene is not in the home during the 1895 Minnesota census. I have no idea where she was between 1885 and her death in 1904. Maybe the 1895 census is a fluke, and she was living with the family but was off visiting someone on the day the census was enumerated?

And for good measure, the most recent family group screen shot. If you look closely, you’ll see that not all the children fit on the screen. That may be the definition of TOO MANY KIDS.

Drouin Collection, Baptismal Register for Louis Charles Couvret 1833

I spent five hours today, searching for my great-great grandfather’s baptismal record. The name in the index was so weirdly misspelled that I wasn’t hitting it, even using wildcards and narrowing by keyword. It had to be there somewhere, though. I knew the where and the when, based on the baptismal dates of the other children and where they were baptized, so I ended up searching for all baptisms at the Basilique Notre-Dame in Montréal, limited by the year 1833. From there, I had to view images of dozens and dozens of pages, before finding the one I wanted.

Victory is mine!